Finished: American Pastoral (Roth). A very good book spanning the 1930's to the 1990's, a Pulitzer Prize winner, about an innately good man...really, almost a man too good to be true, who marries the outwardly just as beautiful Miss New Jersey, and together they produce a child who grows up to be their antithesis in every way....so anti-Vietnam War and so anti-American that she blows up a post office, killing an innocent person. And thus begins the downward slide of Seymour "the Swede" Levov's once fairytale, or so he thought, life. Swede Levov is a tall, handsome, blond haired, blue eyed Jewish boy...a rarity in his community in Newark, New Jersey, who is so athletically talented that he's considered the star of the town for many years. As humble and good as he is talented, all Swede wants is to be happy, raise a family, love his country, thrive in America, etc. He's the son of a Jewish ladies glove maker who took over the family company from his own father. Even though Swede is drafted to play baseball out of high school, he instead decides to learn the glove making business from his father from the ground up so he can take over some day. He works hard and eventually does just that, thriving in the business and moving his wife and baby to the country. His polar opposite, annoying, bratty younger brother goes off and becomes the heart surgeon of the family, while the Swede lives his American dream married to Dawn. In constant, near stream of conscious writing we go back with the Swede to relive his early, happy years as a husband and father...and then onto the heartbreaking years where his daughter, and only child, Merry begins stuttering and spends her adolescence tortured by the stuttering. At age 11 Merry witnesses a monk on the television news setting himself on fire in protest of the war, and from that moment on, the bright girl is immersed in the world around her and political concerns, etc. She grows into a six foot tall, overweight, stuttering, stringy-haired sixteen year old who her parents can't control. She starts hanging out with some radical activists, and the next think you know, she's bombed the town post office in the early morning hours accidentally killing the town doctor who happened to be there to mail some bills before going on call. She becomes a fugitive from the FBI and is in hiding for five years. Needless to say, Swede and Dawn's lives fall apart. Dawn suffers two suicidal hospital stays, and finally decides to get a face lift and move from their house, basically wiping away all traces of Merry. The Swede stays the course and tries his best to keep everyone else on an even keel, always squashing his feelings down. However, we as the reader get to see many of those feelings and it's so sad. :-( So, after five years, the Swede gets a letter telling him that Merry is hiding out right there in Newark under an assumed name. He goes to see her and is devastated all over again at her condition. She's under 100 pounds and says that she now belongs to the religious group the Jains who believe in non-violence towards all organisms...she won't even bathe for fear of harming another organism. She's living in poverty in a run down, dangerous part of town. He tries to talk sense into her and have her come home to deal with everything. He's certain that she was used by a radical group and that she can get off for being so young when the bombing happened. She explains, don't you see? She went on to set more bombs off in Oregon, killing three more people...she was the one who knew how to make the bombs. It was on her, and she doesn't appear to be remorseful. Oh, and on the run, she had been raped several times. She also tells him that the first few days after the bombing, her speech therapist, who the Levovs trusted as a good friend, hid her out from the law and her parents! It's all just too much for Swede to comprehend. And still, Merry doesn't want anything to do with her parents or their way of life. Basically, it is dawning on Swede that she's mentally crazy. He can't reason with her, so he leaves her there for the time being. He calls his brother who tells him he'll come right now and drag her home for him, but the Swede doesn't want to be violent like that. Trying to figure out what to do, he doesn't tell his wife yet. They are having dinner that night with some friends, which happen to include the speech therapist, and his parents, and he'll figure out what to do. During the course of the dinner, he privately confronts the speech therapist and he inadvertently discovers that his wife is having an affair with their "friend" the architect of their new house. The Swede appears to be realizing that the final threads of his world are coming unraveled. The book doesn't really end with any resolution except that it sounds as if Swede is going to turn his daughter into the police before his brother or the speech therapist can (though they never indicate they are going to do that.) It is a sad, spiraling tale...told by a writer who was best friend's with the infamous Swede's younger brother...and told after finding out that the Swede had died of cancer after remarrying and having three sons, but never ridding himself of the guilt he felt that somehow Merry's actions were all his fault...the good man, the outwardly untouchable Swede. Dang...now I have to adjust my Top 100 because this definitely deserves to be on that list!